Tag: tiny concert

Elle Mannion | January 31, 2025 If you want it, Faye Webster’s Tiny Desk can offer an escape. Featuring her longtime band and a string quartet, Webster guides us through a swooning and sweeping set culled from her quickly growing catalog. Webster’s Underdressed at the Symphony was inspired by just that: Buying last-minute tickets to the symphony orchestra in her hometown of Atlanta and finding the experience otherworldly. She performs “But Not Kiss” and the title track from that album. Webster is a gentle but captivating performer in this space, at times grooving with her locked-in band. But she also [See More…]

Elle Mannion | January 29, 2025 MJ Lenderman’s music is a little sad, sometimes funny and almost always comforting. He’s already played the Tiny Desk with the indie rock band Wednesday, but after a stellar 2024 — a memorable feature on Waxahatchee’s “Right Back To It” and his own solo album, Manning Fireworks — it was time to bring him in for his own set. His band, normally called MJ Lenderman and The Wind, told us that when they play their songs stripped back like this, they refer to themselves as MJ Lenderman and The Breeze. The fiddle-forward “Rip Torn” [See More…]

Ann Powers | January 17, 2025 The Red Clay Strays is a big band with a future that keeps expanding. In the past few years the Mobile, Ala.-born five-piece has rocketed from club gigs to major stages like Colorado’s Red Rocks and Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on the strength of its joyful interplay and soaring Southern rock sound. It wasn’t a given that the Strays could rein in the grandeur that its fanbase relishes to fit the modest Tiny Desk. But this easy rolling set shows what’s made these longtime road dogs one of the fastest-rising ensembles in any genre right [See More…]

Nikki Birch | January 13, 2025 The first law of soca music, according to Machel Montano, is: “it’s dancing time all the time.” And in his Tiny Desk Concert, the “King of Soca” provides irrefutable evidence to support that statement. Montano’s performance is the first to bring soca, the high energy dance music of the Caribbean, to the Tiny Desk. The genre was born in Trinidad and Tobago in the early 1970s when calypso artist Lord Shorty (who later chose the name Ras Shorty I) added traditional Indian percussion instruments and rhythms to calypso music — itself a fusion that [See More…]

Ashley Pointer | December 20, 2024 When I greeted Sabrina Carpenter at NPR HQ for her Tiny Desk debut, her charm was immediately disarming. Bubbling with excitement, she extended her hand, introduced herself and complimented my outfit with genuine warmth. You’d think this was one of her first “big time” gigs, not a regular performance for a pop veteran, having sold out arenas across the country touring her now six time Grammy-nominated sixth album, Short n’ Sweet. That humility made me love her even more. But Carpenter delivers far more than just charm in this performance. Backed by her band, [See More…]

Ashley Pointer | December 6, 2024 Doechii, known as the “Swamp Princess,” arrived at NPR HQ radiating confidence. She moved with purpose, knowing exactly what she wanted and how to achieve it. Her declarative statement, “I’m everything,” from “BOOM BAP” off her Grammy-nominated mixtape, ALLIGATOR BITES NEVER HEAL, was on full display in her Tiny Desk debut. Backed by a full band, horns and two background singers, Doechii’s performance was a masterclass in creativity. Sporting vintage academia looks, complete with matching cornrows and beads, Doechii delivers a freshly rearranged medley of cuts from ALLIGATOR BITES NEVER HEAL, tailored specifically for [See More…]

Felix Contreras | November 22, 2024 Watching Wyatt Flores lead his band through their turn behind the Desk is like watching stardust coalesce into not just a celestial star, but an actual Americana and country star. With genuine smiles and even a nervous false start, Flores is engaging in both his personality and music. This performance is a reflection of his shift into a more joyous celebration of his small town Oklahoma roots following his well crafted songs meditating on loss. I don’t know about you, but I find it very difficult — if not impossible — to not be [See More…]

Bobby Carter | November 11, 2024 Elmiene has a natural light. His charisma, humor and self-awareness strikes first, but the knockout blow is that vintage voice. If I didn’t know better, I’d assume I’m listening to someone with years of Baptist church training and countless life experiences. Yet he’s a 23-year-old Muslim man, quick to say that he writes mostly from the perspectives of those around him. He’s a poet, born to perform, which is likely why he wasn’t really nervous but more so in awe of performing at the Tiny Desk — especially when he found out the toy [See More…]

Stephen Thompson | October 25, 2024 When Dua Lipa came to visit the Tiny Desk, she had nothing to prove — and much to live up to. After all, the singer’s Tiny Desk (home) concert, recorded in London in the aftermath of her 2020 blockbuster Future Nostalgia, still holds the record for the most-viewed Tiny Desk concert in history, her 130 million views surpassing even the likes of Mac Miller and Anderson .Paak. Four years later, the pop superstar finally graced the actual Tiny Desk, this time armed with four warm and inviting songs from Radical Optimism. Arriving in the [See More…]